All Pests

Identify before you buy - the commonest wasted purchase is the right product for the wrong pest. Droppings, damage and the place you are seeing activity tell you most of it: rodents leave droppings and gnaw marks along walls and skirting; crawling insects turn up along edges, in cupboards and in damp corners; flying insects gather at windows and bins. Our expert guides each open with identification, so start with whichever sounds closest to what you are seeing.

Rodent control covers mice and rats - traps, bait stations, rodenticides and proofing. Crawling insect control covers ants, cockroaches, silverfish, woodlice, fleas, bed bugs and carpet beetles, and is where to look if you are finding insects along skirting, behind appliances or in damp corners.

Flying insect control covers flies, wasps, moths and mosquitoes. Bird control covers deterrents and spikes. Slugs, snails and fox deterrents sit under Other Pests. If your pest does not obviously fit one of these, tell us what you are seeing and where, and we will point you at the right product or say if it is a job for a professional.

Identify, proof, trap, treat, monitor - in that order. Work out what you have, close the gaps and remove the food and water drawing it in, then trap or bait, and only reach for a chemical treatment where the earlier steps have not been enough. Leading with a spray is the commonest mistake: it clears what you can see and changes nothing about why they were there.

A kit where you are dealing with an active problem and want the pieces that work together in one go - trap, bait or attractant, and something for the gaps. Individual products where you already know what you need, are topping up, or are proofing rather than treating. For a first infestation a kit usually saves a second order halfway through, which matters, because stopping mid-treatment is what lets a population recover.

It depends entirely on the product type, so read the label on each one. Traps, sticky traps, screens and proofing involve no active substance and suit any household when placed out of reach. Sprays, powders and baits need more care: keep children and pets out until treated surfaces are dry, ventilate as directed, and do not treat food preparation surfaces unless the label allows it. Rodenticides must always be used inside a lockable bait station.

More than most people expect. Traps and monitoring traps catch without any active substance. Proofing - screens, brush strips, sealing gaps and air brick covers - stops pests entering at all, which is the only measure that deals with the cause rather than the symptom. Pesticide-free sprays and physical-action powders cover most of the rest. Chemical treatment is a later step, not a starting point.

Two different pictures. If nothing has changed at all, the treatment has usually not reached where the pest actually lives - most pests shelter in gaps, voids and under things rather than crossing open floor, so treat the edges and harbourage rather than the middle of a room. If numbers dropped and then came back, the treatment worked and something is bringing them back: an unsealed gap, a food or water source, or a breeding site you have not found yet.

Two to three weeks with no fresh signs - no droppings, no new damage, no sightings, and nothing new on a trap left set. Leave one or two traps in place after treatment finishes rather than clearing everything away. That is what tells you early if activity restarts, instead of finding out when the problem is fully back.

Where the problem has spread across several rooms, where it has recurred after a full and correctly followed treatment cycle, where there are vulnerable occupants, or where the job needs access you cannot reach safely - a wasp nest high on a building, or a loft you would need a ladder for. Read our guide to DIY versus professional pest control for where the line sits.